Setting ﬁrm foundations

A brand new dharma publishing imprint, The Tuwhiri Project has produced our first book, After Buddhism: a workbook.

We’ve created an easy read that will help people work their way through and get a good understanding of Stephen Batchelor’s After Buddhism: rethinking the dharma for a secular age, on their own or with others.

Our book brings together a series of talks given in Sydney, Australia by the secular insight meditation teacher, Winton Higgins, to Bluegum Sangha and Golden Wattle Sangha. Questions for study at the end of each chapter have been prepared by Jim Champion in Southampton, UK.

please support Tuwhiri

The crowdfunding appeal we set up on Kickstarter – to our amazement and joy – reached 128 percent of the goal in just 15 hours. We then set what Kickstarter calls ‘stretch goals’ and achieved all three with 25 days still to go.

From this firm base we have been developing the project as a whole, as the ongoing crowdfunding process meant we continued to receive orders for After Buddhism: a workbook before they were printed, and so knew how many to print.

More than 20 backers received 10 or more copies of the workbook, with they will run courses on After Buddhism and develop an understanding of secular Buddhism. As this is a workbook, we’re really keen to see how they’re used to create conversations in dharma communities and sanghas around a secular dharma.

In our third stretch goal we expressed an intention to create a free online course using this material. None of us have created an online course before, and we understand now that we will need to be better resourced to produce a thoroughly worthwhile course, one that will fully engage people. If you’d like to offer practical or financial support to help us create an online course that is free to users, please send us a message through the Contact page.

By setting up The Tuwhiri Project as a social enterprise that is 100 percent owned by a charity, Aotearoa Buddhist Education Trust, we are allowing those of you who wish to support not just this one book but the project as a whole, helping nurture a culture of generosity.

Pease don’t miss this opportunity to help support the development of educational resources for secular dharma practice communities, in the English-speaking world and, we hope, beyond. Please continue to support Tuwhiri through buying books and making a donation (or three)!